Courts and the Culture Wars

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For much of the second half of the 20th century, America's courts - state and federal - have injected themselves into what many critics consider to be fundamentally moral or political disputes. By constitutionalizing these disputes courts have arguably reduced the ability of Americans to engage in traditional, political modes of settling differences. While legal discourse is well-suited to choosing decisive winners and losers, political discourse is perhaps more conducive to reasonable compromise and accommodation. This text brings together some of America's thinkers in constitutional theory and practice to consider the impact of judicial engagement in the moral, religious and cultural realms - including school prayer, abortion, homosexual rights, and expressive speech - and the threat the judiciary poses to the very legitimacy of the American republican regime.

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Courts and the Culture Wars casts a spotlight on the role that judges and lawyers have played in undercutting Americans' ability to have a say in setting the conditions under which they live, work and raise their children. These essays by some of the nation's most forthright social critics are lively, provocative, and sobering. -- Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See

Author Bio

Bradley C. S. Watson is Associate Professor of Political Science and Fellow in Politics and Culture in the Center for Economic and Policy Education at Saint Vincent College. He is the author of Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, (Lexington Books, 1999).